Friday, December 21, 2012

Approved!

After practically begging to be accepted into the Mary Claire-King study; I finally got a letter that, even though they weren't taking new participants, if I could get blood samples to them by the end of December, they wanted to include me.
I was really excited until I realized my cancer was so weird that I was being accepted into a national closed study.
Either way, it's exciting.

I should know more about my genes in 8-12 months. I opted to know the results; which many did not.
If there are any mutations that could possibly cause future cancers, I want to know about them.
I had three blood vials drawn and drove them to Fed Ex. Who knew it was so easy to ship body fluids?

On a somewhat unrelated topic, because I tested negative for the BRCA testing last year, I opted to do BART testing a few weeks ago. The BRCA Analysis Rearrangement Test (BART) is an additional level of analysis, which goes beyond DNA sequences of genes. BART looks for large rearrangements, deletions, and insertions of DNA material. A positive BART result has the same medical implications as a mutation found with more routine types of analysis. Anyone who has had comprehensive BRCA1/2 testing could go on for BART analysisDrumroll, please..................

Although I don't understand much of what these letters say, I DO understand NO MUTATION DETECTED and REDUCED RISK. :)